Sandy Springs Adopts New Zoning Code With Key Changes

SANDY SPRINGS, GA -- A unanimous vote cast at the Sandy Springs City Council Aug. 15 meeting has brought to an end the two-year massive project to update the city's comprehensive plan and development code.

The new zoning code and map was approved by the council, closing out the city's Next 10 process that included hundreds of meetings and thousands of comments provided by residents and stakeholders who weighed in throughout the process.

Tuesday's approval came with some striking differences to the draft document rolled out at the Aug. 1 meeting, namely the removal of an affordable housing mandate. Where higher density is an opportunity, such as areas near transit, the city included incentives for developers to add workforce housing targeting middle-income residents, but removed the mandate of the original code draft (SIGN UP: Get Patch's Daily Newsletter and Real Time News Alerts. Or, if you have an iPhone, download the free Patch app).

Before the council took action, Mayor Rusty Paul said he felt it would be more effective to put together an affordable housing task force that would bring a diverse group of people together to figure out what policy could best suit the community. Having a mandate in place, he added, may lead to the results the city would like to see.

However, it's an issue that has remained at the back of Paul's mind since he was sworn into office nearly four years ago. From time when he was a newly elected mayor to his service today, Paul has maintained that it is "immoral" to ask Sandy Springs first responders to put their lives on the line for a city where they cannot afford to live. Throughout his tenure, that challenge has been addressed by working to identify locations where the city can get police officers and other first responders to put down roots.

While strides have been made on that front, the city still has a lot of work to do on this topic, which is why Paul requested the council to delay adopting a mandate within the code.

"There's one thing I can tell you," he said. "The seven people up here are united in trying to find the solution to how we bring young families, our middle class families, our firefighters, our teachers our nurses, the people who work at our hospitals, the people who work at our restaurants -- all the people that we need to have a healthy economy here and where they don't have to drive through all of our neighborhoods to get here."

As a whole, Mayor Paul said the city's 300-page document is not perfect, as he and other elected officials expect there will be things the city will have to come back and tweak. However, what was before the council on Tuesday is "about as close to perfect as we can make it at this point," Paul stated.

The code's top priority is the need for residential protection, with 67 percent of the city’s area now listed as protected neighborhoods. At the request of the community, the city also created a Village Neighborhood Character Area along the Roswell Road corridor south of Interstate 285.

"While little change in uses is expected in the near future, this Office-Neighborhood designation, along with shopfront zoning, provides opportunity for less dense office uses, creating better transition with the nearby protected neighborhoods as described in the Next Ten Comp Plan," the city added.

Along with scrapping the affordable housing mandate, other amendments brought forth and approved Tuesday include:

• removing a section that would have allowed an existing gas station to relocate within an half-mile of an existing fuel pump or gas station site "without regard for the distance from the other station," effectively locking these establishments into their existing locations.
• Amending a section that would wipe out prior conditions of zoning to add exceptions for conditions restricting ball field or playground lighting and sound and those that curtail vehicular access to or from a particular place.
• allowing self-storage uses in the Commercial Corridor zone and self-storage, mini-warehouses in the Commercial Mixed Use zone (by use permit only).
• prohibiting retail establishments greater than 30,000 square feet in the City Springs districts and Commercial Mixed Use district from Abernathy Road to Interstate 285.

Requests to make rezoning changes from one character area to another will be considered twice a year in a two-step process. The applicant must first apply for a character area map amendment. The application procedure includes two community meetings, a public hearing before the Planning Commission and a public hearing before mayor and City Council.

If approved, the applicant must then follow the standard rezoning process. Rezoning requests within the same character area will follow the standard rezoning process: two community meetings, a public hearing before the Planning Commission and a public hearing before mayor and City Council.

The city in February adopted its Next 10 Comp Plan following an 18-month process. The comp plan serves as a policy guiding land use and redevelopment for the future. It includes a city-wide plan as well as four small area plans that focus on key needs for specific locations in the city: Roswell Road, Perimeter Center, the MARTA Stations and Powers Ferry Landing.

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Where the comp plan provides guidance in planning, the city's development code seeks to regulate the type, scale and intensity of development in specified districts. Work on the development code began late 2016 and continued through summer 2017, including a series of open houses, stakeholder meetings, drop-in hours at city hall, surveys, as well as emailed input from both residential and business property owners.

The process generated more than 200 community meetings, workshops, open houses as well as hundreds of surveys emails and face-to-face meetings with residents and stakeholders throughout the city, Paul added.

For an effort this big and drawn out, Council member Gabriel Sterling said it's been a process that was largely without anger and contention, which is not the norm for cities around metro Atlanta.

"We are an example of the way cities and governments are supposed to run," he added.

The new Sandy Springs Development Code goes into effect Sept. 15. All existing moratoriums will be removed as of that date.

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